


where can i put it down?

by layersofsilence



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Melodrama, MerMay, MerMay 2019, Reunions, Selkies, The cheesiest cheese to ever cheese, With A Twist, it's a two man show, merfolk, or so it felt like while i was writing, this really is the most dramatiqueTM thing i have ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layersofsilence/pseuds/layersofsilence
Summary: The beach is deserted, and the waves loud. Today the very sea chatters, buzzing with the news: there’s going to be a mating. There are only four days between the announcements and the ceremony - and then Steve sees his mate's face, and his heart sinks. He knows that face. He loves - he’d loved that face. Right up until he’d seen it again, and wasn’t that a laugh?





	where can i put it down?

**Author's Note:**

> sliding in very last minute with a mermay tale!!! title from ann carson's [The Glass Essay](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48636/the-glass-essay) because it's really all my brain could think of, this bit -
>
>> You remember too much,  
> my mother said to me recently.
>> 
>> Why hold onto all that? And I said,  
> Where can I put it down?

The beach is deserted, and the waves loud. Today the very sea chatters, buzzing with the news: there’s going to be a mating. Steve pulls his tail up to his chest and stares forlornly out at the water.

It’s simple enough. The ocean is large and most of it likes to be unwelcoming; it was inevitable, then, that there’d be some territorial overlap. The once-named Pierce pod, now newly-renamed the Barnes pod, was half the size it was after what was rumoured to be some rather nasty infighting, and their hold on the kelp forest they spend half the year in has weakened. Steve’s shoal, conversely, has been growing; things progressed from there in their natural course.

He thinks it was his mother who had pushed for the alliance to be strengthened with a mating bond; he thinks he understands why. He’s growing old, too old, and had a reputation of being too picky. A selkie husband he dislikes who’s away for half the year is far better than a mer-husband he dislikes who will be around all the time. It’s a kindness, in her own way, the best way she can provide for him.

It doesn’t stop him from wishing he could call it off.

The waves part, and Sam walks up the beach in human form, plops down beside him in the sand. He winces immediately, as sand has a habit of getting into inconvenient places, and shifts into mer-form, as Steve had done a few hours - hours? days? - ago.

“Here again?” he asks. His voice, though exasperated, is not entirely unsympathetic.

“Here again,” Steve tries to say - his voice comes out more whispery than he’d wanted. He busies himself with a handful of sand, watches it run through his fingers. Each tiny grain is struck golden by the late afternoon sunlight. He’s come here - not often, nobody could say that. He lets months elapse between visits, sometimes. But he always comes back. “Saying goodbye.”

“You mean that?” Sam asks, eyeing Steve. His scepticism, while soft, is clear.

Steve can’t even muster up the motivation to project his voice, let alone sound convincing about it. He does mean it, though; it’s not as though he could keep coming here after he’s married. It didn’t seem fair, somehow. And surely it’s high time to put summer romances behind him. Truthfully, high time had come and gone long ago.

“I mean it,” he says dully, finally. The sun’s dipped low in the time that he’s been sitting here; the light is orange and close to gone.

“Steve -” Sam starts. His voice is terribly gentle. Steve dives into the waves and doesn’t hear the rest of the sentence. He doesn’t think he could hear anything gentle without breaking.

~*~

There are only four days between the announcements and the ceremony. They pass in a blur, at once instant and endless. The shoal whirls around him, determined to have everything ready and ostentatiously perfect. It’s all he can do to watch with detached eyes; he feels like he’s far away, behind a strong current that warps the water between him and everyone else. He gets some worried looks for it, but everyone is to busy to pry, and he thinks he prefers it that way.

It seems like the space between one blink and the next has him behind a kelp screen, his tail undulating gently. The waters stir; he sees a glint, and knows that his husband-to-be can only be a few metres away. Waiting until their respective elders call them out to face each other. It’s meant to represent blind faith in joining together. Steve wishes they’d exercise his blind faith faster.

“Steven,” a familiar voice says, warm. His mother. Another voice, unfamiliar, calls for a James. Steve swims out with his hands appropriately outstretched, and his eyes go to his mother automatically. Though it’s not the done thing, he brushes against her arm with the back of one hand, which surely can’t be constituted as too offensive, and then he shifts his gaze to look at his new mate.

And his heart sinks into the ocean floor. He knows that face. Knows the man holding out one arm to him.

He blinks, blinks again, bites his lips to keep from screaming. He hasn’t seen James for five years, and though time has changed him there’s no mistaking those grey eyes, that sharp jaw. Of all the people - he’d given up hope years ago. He’d never expected to see James again, and underwater at that.

He loves - he’d loved that face. Right up until he’d seen it again, and wasn’t that a laugh? 

They don’t have to touch each other during the ceremony, only swear their vows, and Steve is eternally grateful for it. He’s sure he couldn’t keep his voice steady if he was touching -

The celebrations start around them as the elders pronounce them bonded. Steve can’t look away from the man - the _selkie_ \- in front of him. The familiar face, the entirely unfamiliar drape of seal-skin over his back and left arm, the entirely unfamiliar tail. Part of his brain still protests, helpless and hopeless, a tiny fish caught in a rip current: no, this can’t be right, something is wrong. He’s dreaming, he’s hallucinating, he’s finally given in to his own wishful thinking. Bucky had been a human.

James is a selkie. Undeniable. And selkies were born, not turned.

Someone tells them to do a lap of the kelp forest together, which must be a selkie custom since it certainly isn’t a mer one, and unfamiliar hands push at his body. The next thing he knows, he and his husband are alone, keeping pace with each other through the water. The silence between them is thick, more awkward than ever before.

“I don’t remember you this quiet,” Bucky - _James_ , Steve reminds himself fiercely, _his name is James Barnes_ \- says.

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“Don’t you?”

“Not to you,” Steve says, and adds, pointedly, “ _James_.”

James’s expression hardens, but not fast enough to conceal the flash of hurt behind his eyes. The pettiest part of Steve relishes it. All he can think of is the way it’d felt to be left alone, the way he’d cried five years ago when he’d been left standing alone with waves lapping at his feet, four years ago when he’d stopped searching, three years ago when he’d finally given up hope. “My friends call me Bucky,” he says. “I don’t think you’re in any position to take a moral high ground, _Steve_.”

“Steve _is_ my name,” Steve snaps. “And _I’m_ not the one who left!” It feels good to shout. Steve feels blood rush into his cheeks, and feels alive for the first time in years. James’s exposed hand is clenched into a fist by his side, and his seal-skin ripples over him anxiously, as though it wants to envelop him entirely. Steve could welcome that, at least. He wouldn’t have to talk to a seal.

“Left,” James repeats, his mouth twisted and ugly.

“Yeah, you asshole,” Steve snaps. “I waited for you for weeks. I _cried_.” Merfolk weren’t meant to produce salt water, not when they lived in it. It’d hurt. Everything had hurt, around that time.

“ _Steve_.” James stumbles over the name, and that infuriates Steve even further, sends hot anger bubbling up through his veins. James has no right to say his name.

“I bet you laughed,” he says bitterly, his tail thrashing in the water, flicking mer-made currents in James’s direction and forcing him to fight to stay still. “Getting a stupid human to fall in - to fall for -”

“Stop accusing me of things you can’t defend,” James mutters through gritted teeth. In another world, another fight, Steve might admire that restraint. In this world, he pushes aggressively closer until James shoves him away, rough, his hand like a brand on Steve’s skin. Through it all, his voice stays calm, even, and that is - infuriating. “As if you ever would have come away with me!” 

“I _would_ ,” Steve snaps, his voice cresting louder, pushing himself close again, so close that he can feel the warmth of skin through the scant distance of water that separates them.

“Of course you would have,” James snaps, caustic and stinging. Steve’s whole body cries out at the disbelief in his voice, at the pain it brings. He hadn’t thought he could hurt like this, not again. “When our plans were to leave the sea. You would’ve dried out and your steps would’ve felt like walking on knives -”

“Fuck you,” Steve says; his vision blurs, his eyes hurt. He thinks he’s crying again, for the first time in years, but it’s hard to tell underwater. “I would’ve done it. It would’ve been worth it. I _loved_ you.”

That makes James jerk away like he’s been burned. Steve _hates_ him.

“Fuck you,” he says again, blurrily. “I don’t want to talk to you.” He swims away before James can protest, and though it’s horribly rude to leave everyone hanging he doesn’t think he can stomach another minute, another second, of celebration.

~*~

He swims for ages, alone in the sea, darting through familiar coral and crevices too fast to appreciate them. After the ceremony he and James are meant to live together, in a den that his shoal and James’s pod had dug out of the sea floor together. He can’t bear the idea, but while running away from the celebrations had been rude to everyone, running away from the den will inevitably be taken as an insult to the selkie pod. He can’t afford that - his shoal can’t afford that, not with this alliance so new.

Mercifully, the den is empty when he reaches it. It stays that way even when the water has turned pitch-black and cold, and Steve has almost given up hope. Perhaps it’d all been a strange dream, he thinks wildly. Perhaps he’s going to wake up any moment and marry a stranger. He’d barely be nervous at all, not with this experience fresh in his memory.

The way James had jerked away at the word love plays through his mind, over and over. He buries his face in the nearest wall and tries to focus on something else, anything else, but he can’t.

“Are you alright?” a voice asks tentatively, and Steve whips around, cursing himself for not paying attention to the movement of the water around him.

“I’m fine,” he says stiffly. James nods at him brusquely and then pulls the rest of his seal-skin over his head and melds into his seal-form. Steve can’t pretend it’s not a relief to have to converse, even as he feels bubbles of disappointment rising in his chest at James’s easy dismissal; he turns his back on seal-James’s wide dark eyes. “Goodnight.”

There’s no reply save for a swish of water as the seal - as James - swims out of the room. Steve deflates. He doesn’t sleep well.

~*~

When he wakes up, James is still a seal, and Steve can’t speak to him. He’d feel stupid for so much as trying; James has made it clear enough how they stand. He can’t wait for this stupid week to be over - a whole week in which nobody is allowed to visit them and they’re discouraged from visiting anyone. It usually goes on even longer, but in this particular instance it has been deferred for a week because of Steve’s unfamiliarity with the custom and then another week out of respect for their status as an arranged mating and not a love match. Even with such concessions, Steve is fairly sure that he’s not going to make it through the week alive. He can feel familiar defensive prickliness simmering low in his gut, hot and furious because if he’s not angry he’ll just be desolate.

For three days, James makes himself scarce. When Steve does see him, he's in seal form and thus mute - he doesn’t so much as have to attempt a conversation on even the most inoffensive topic, let alone attempt to cut the tension that lies between them. It's _very convenient_ for him, Steve is sure.

He can feel himself glaring harder every time he sees so much as a flash of sleek seal skin out of the corner of his eye; he can’t help it. His new mate - his old love - turns away from him, and it hurts. It shouldn’t hurt, and that only makes him angrier, makes him glare more, as prickly and acidic as he can make himself. A vicious cycle.

In an attempt to break it he occupies himself with the kelp forest outside their doorstep: surveying the sea bed, harvesting the kelp, weaving it in quick, practiced strokes. It’s boring work, but it’s better than no work at all, and there is always use for more kelp in the shoal. Sometimes, as he’s working with the long strands, he fancies that he feels James’s eyes on him, and every time, just for a moment, he feels a thrill down his spine at the thought. And then, inevitably, he will scowl at himself for being so foolish, and turn around, and there will be no sign of anyone behind him - save, perhaps, for the swaying of a certain section of vegetation, or a small swirl of disturbed, fretful sand.

He scowls every time to make up for the thrill, the threat of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and can’t quite be sure what the hot tangled emotions rising in his chest are. Can’t bring himself to examine further what effect a simple yearning gaze could have on his poor stupid heart. He’d never gone so far as to think he was over Bucky, he could admit that much to himself - but then, he’d never thought he’d have to be. Bucky had been a human. James Barnes is a selkie. He’d never even considered that those two worlds might collide, and collide as ungracefully as this to boot.

After three long days of silence, of seal-form, it’s a surprise to watch James peel his seal-skin back, until its top half has fallen away, until he has emerged from like a strange sort of sunrise. Until Steve can see his head, his torso, his right arm. Steve hates the way that his heart flutters in his throat, hates the way that he can feel himself flushing at the sight. “Steve -”

“No,” Steve snaps at once.

“Steve.”

“I liked you better when you were a seal.”

James watches him with sad eyes. Steve hardens his heart. “You hate me,” James murmurs, and the silence that lies between them is deafening. James has no right to be sad, had lost every shred of it when he’d left with no explanation, come back with even less.

Steve’s under no obligation to say another word, but he never could refuse that look in Bucky’s eyes, and it looks like he can’t refuse James, either. “You never told me,” he says finally through gritted teeth, in the afternoon; James just keeps looking, his eyes big and soulful, and that makes Steve even angrier. “You never told me why you left.”

For a moment, it seems as though James is going to swim away, take refuge in open waters. His tail flicks agitatedly, the chunky movement of it strange through the water compared to the more sinuous motions Steve has been surrounded by his entire life.

“You don’t want to know,” James says finally. It is the worst answer that Steve can imagine, and he’s imagined a fair few.

“Believe me,” he says through gritted teeth, “I want to know.” James doesn’t answer, only gets that insouciant, defiant look in his eyes that strikes at memories buried deep in Steve’s brain. After a moment of silence, he goes so far as to bob downwards as though to cover himself with his seal-skin again; Steve sees red. He’s not sure how, but in an instant he has Bucky pinned against the wall behind him.

“Hey -”

“Fuck you,” Steve snarls, pressed close and tight to Bucky’s body, feeling the way it shifts and slides against him.

“Been there,” Bucky drawls. He’s doing this on _purpose_ , he’s winding Steve up to change the subject, and it’s _working_. “Done that.”

Steve growls, incoherent and incandescent with rage. He wants to punch Bucky’s face in, wants to wring the truth out of him, wants -

Wants to kiss him. Suddenly, he’s hyper-aware of every place they’re in contact, of Bucky’s lazy, challenging eyes.

“Lost your tongue?” Bucky tsks once, eyes glittering. As a seal he has dark eyes, but in human form they’re the most gorgeous shade of grey-blue that Steve has never seen anywhere else.

Steve kisses him, and neither of them can say anything through that. Bucky returns the kiss forcefully, as though he has something to prove; the way he curves to sling his free arm around Steve’s neck, the way his body twists and presses intimately into Steve’s body, it says more than any words ever could. For a moment, he takes Steve off guard, has him almost backing up - and then Bucky cheats, twines his fingers through the short hair at the nape of Steve’s neck and _tugs_. Steve’s head arches backwards, and he can feel his gills fluttering desperately.

The sharp ache wrenches the embarrassing, trembling beginnings of a moan out of him, and he wishes he could take the sound back as soon as it’s made. Bucky’s mouth tips upwards, smug, and Steve lunges forward, bites down hard on that sweet lower lip. He’s not the only one who can use past experience to his advantage.

This kiss is all passion and anger and desperation, free of any tenderness Steve might have imagined before - Bucky pushes, aggressive in his campaign to drive coherent thought out of Steve’s mind, and Steve pushes right back, the perfect culmination to the tension that’s been building between them for days on end. When one of Steve’s hands presses the back of Bucky’s neck, heavy and proprietary, he’s the one to win a noise, a thready, breathless whine that at once sates something in him and fuels it.

Bucky’s lips are swollen and his eyes are so, so bright when they finally have to break apart, panting for breath.

“I hate you,” Steve breathes. His voice is ragged, and he sounds like he means just the opposite. Bucky’s eyes dim. “I hate you.” If he doesn’t, he’s going to tumble headfirst into the very opposite of hate, and he can’t - he can’t let himself do that. Not with this new Bucky, who stares up at him with melancholy eyes and a clenched jaw, a closed mouth.

“I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” Something in Steve’s chest cries out and breaks.

Just as suddenly as he’d pressed them together, he’s put a room between them again. “You can’t say that,” Steve says dumbly. “You don’t get to - you -”

His tail is thrashing again, almost involuntary, disturbing all the water in the room, buffeting James - who, this time, lets himself be pressed against the wall, watching Steve. When he turns to leave, desperate for a reprieve from everything that lies thick between them, James says, “Wait.” Despite himself, despite everything, Steve stops. Waits.

James swims up to him, around him, ducks down a little to meet his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can you -”

“You’re an asshole,” Steve snaps, suddenly cold, hands clenched into fists by his side. “The least you could do is give me a _reason_.” He doesn’t let himself be affected by James’s sad eyes; doesn’t let himself to anything but swim away, faster than he can be called back.

~*~

James’s seal-eyes seem even more ridiculously soft and yearning in the wake of their argument. Steve tries to keep his heart hard, his thoughts prickly, but - he can’t. He can’t do it. It seems horribly unfair, that all he has to do is look at James and his mind transports him back to their beach and their summer and their kisses, five years ago, talking and laughing and touching each other endlessly in the sand. It was astonishing that they’d found enough to talk about, to laugh about, when they’d been hiding so much from each other - but then, it’s not as though either of them had known enough to tell when the other had been lying. That’s the worst part of this, Steve is certain - the way that those treasured memories have lost their golden hue, grown stained with hindsight and sad, heavy knowledge. And still, Steve can feel himself breaking down. He sees Bucky, he thinks of what they’d had together, and he _wants_. 

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? James isn’t Bucky. James doesn’t feel what Bucky had felt - what Bucky had seemed to feel. And Steve still didn’t know why he’d left, that night they had planned to run away together.

Silence builds between them, thick enough that the very water between them seems to swirl more slowly. Occasionally, they will wish each other good morning and good night. The shadows of everything they don’t talk about thickens the current between them.

Steve feels James’s gaze on his back all the more often, and decides to return the favour in kind. When it is his turn to do the spying he finds James in the reef in his half-human guise, caring gently for the clownfish and their anemones, cleaning them, making sure they’re in healthy positions, that they catch as much of the sun as they can. He talks to them all as he works, voice low and gentle. Steve’s chest seizes, listening to that indistinct murmur, watching his hand work so gently. He wants that attention directed at him, wants so badly that it aches. The thought hits him with a clarity sharp enough to cut: he could ask for this mating to be dissolved, ask to go through it all again with someone else from the selkie pod, and he won’t. Can’t bring himself to consider the option, because to be near Bucky again is so much more than he’d ever hoped he could have again.

Somehow, in that kiss, his anger had fizzled away into hopeless acceptance. If he can’t bring himself to glare at the seal in his living quarters, he doesn’t look at him at all. A flawed solution, certainly, but better than having to face his own emotions, his own desires. To say that he’d never gotten over James was an understatement. To have said only that he’d loved James was a lie.

A day before their marriage-imposed sequestration is due to end, James slips his skin back to face Steve, before Steve can turn away. He is entirely prepared to slip through the door and make his escape, but then James holds his hand out and Steve cannot do anything but still. “Come to the surface with me.” It’s a plea, much more than it is a demand, and Steve - Steve wishes he could say no. Stays still and silent instead, because if he opens his mouth he knows that assent will come out of it. James looks at him, and then he backs away. “Alright,” he murmurs, and makes as though to leave himself; somehow, the sight is one that sends dread sinking through Steve’s chest.

“Why?” he asks impulsively, before James can go anywhere, can draw his seal-skin back over himself and evade questions as a seal. This time James is the one who stills; he turns his head just slightly, to peer over his shoulder. It’s not intentional, it can’t be, because Bucky hadn’t even been aware of Steve’s presence, but it’s the same angle Steve had first seen him from, lurking behind a rock and stupidly fascinated with human things, with humans. His profile is as beautiful as it’d been then, when it’d been lit by the setting sun.

“Why what?”

“You know why what,” Steve snaps. “Why do you want to take me to the surface?”

Bucky looks back at him properly, then, and it’s hard not to fall into him when his eyes are so -

“Nothing,” he says quietly. “Nevermind. It was a stupid idea. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Bucky -” Steve groans, moving to get closer to him, but with a single dexterous movement Bucky has slid his seal-skin on properly and is gone, twisting through the swaying strands of kelp where Steve’s chances of finding him are vanishingly low. He stays where he is for an embarrassingly long time, watching light play through the water, watching the gentle movements of the tall forest, watching for another hint of Bucky.

No such hint appears. Eventually, Steve strikes out in his own direction, trying to think of anything but Bucky and failing, utterly and miserably. He’s impossible not to think about, had been utterly captivating from the very first time Steve had seen him. Five years and he hasn’t changed, not in any way that would render him unrecognisable to Steve’s foolish, yearning eyes.

_Come to the surface with me_. The words float through Steve’s brain. He wonders where Bucky had meant to take him, why. Their beach is close by - that is, the beach where they’d first met, where they’d continued to meet over the course of that one slow entire summer. There’s nothing there to see, though; Steve had been back to its desolate landscape enough times to glean that from it, if nothing else.

Stupidly, coincidentally, his path converges with Bucky’s. They run across each other in the kelp forest, and by the time the thought of fleeing has entered Steve’s mind he has stopped and stared for too long; it would be strange, awkward, to swim now. Bucky remains motionless in the water - a seal, but there is never any doubt as to who it is. Steve knows. Steve looks at him, and knows.

Bucky pulls his seal-skin back into its customary position; over his head and freeing his right arm. “Did you know I was going to come here?” he asks. Steve shakes his head.

“I was just swimming,” he says, and can’t even muster up the energy to snap. The back of his mind thinks that it must mean something, that both of them had made it here. The sensible part of his mind squashes the thought. “I’m -”

“Don’t. Don’t be sorry.” They stay where they are, staring at each other. Neither of them wants to be the first to leave.

Finally, Bucky holds out his free hand again. Steve can’t not take it, and in an instant his body has disobeyed him in the way that he hadn’t allowed his words to do. Bucky’s grip tightens, and he pulls the two of them upwards; as they ascend, his fingers intertwine with Steve’s, gentle and undeniable. Their destination is obvious after a few moments. Steve doesn’t ask. He feels like all the fight has been leached out of him, with that one touch.

Bucky slips his legs out of his seal-skin to kick the last few metres, and Steve, not to be outdone, follows suit. He hasn’t taken human form for a long time, but the skill of splitting one’s tail, once learned, is hard to forget.

It’s evening when they surface, both gasping for air; the stars are beginning to uncover their faces, to look down at the pair of them. Bucky doesn’t let go of his hand even as they gain their footing and trudge onto shore, sand slipping and sticking between their toes, scraping at the delicate skin. He doesn’t say a word, and neither does Steve. The stars wink down at them like a series of obnoxiously affable uncles.

“Why are we here?” Steve asks finally, his voice barely a whisper. The wind threatens to snatch the words away, but Bucky catches them, tilts his head at Steve.

“I believed that you hated me, you know.”

“Did you?” Steve asks. And then, perhaps more pertinent, “Do you?”

Bucky considers him. “No,” he says. “Not after -” There are too many currents underneath the word; Steve turns away. “You watched me. Am I right?”

“What does it matter?” Steve asks. What could it matter, if his foolish heart remembered far too little, and loved too much?

“It matters,” Bucky says, “if only to me.” He takes Steve’s hand again, walking him to the rocks on the far side of the beach. He trails through the lapping waves, occasionally looking back as though to make sure that Steve’s feet don’t dry out. Despite how he’s stretched out his legs, his seal-skin clings stubbornly to his back, to his shoulders, draping over his left side like a strange asymmetrical cape.

Finally they reach the craggy tumble of rocks which effectively secludes this beach from the outside world, and Bucky walks him gently between a few, across a few more, until finally he turns into a tiny alcove that would be invisible to anyone not searching for it.

“Here,” he says; his voice is suddenly much louder, since the wind cannot adequately navigate the sharp turns and stone around them. “This is where I hid my skin, when I met you.” He lets go of Steve’s hand to press his fingers into a safe dark crevice, a little below chest level. Steve watches, rendered silent. Rendered patient; Bucky is coming to a point. He’s not the kind of person not to have one.

For some endless minutes, Bucky only breathes, increasingly shaky in the grey-blue evening light. Finally, with an indrawn breath, as though it pains him, he pulls the last of his seal-skin off his shoulders, pulling it away from his left side. Steve breathes in - not quite a gasp, but certainly not a natural noise, either.

“Your arm -” Or rather, the pronounced lack of arm which sheds new light on the constant, slightly strange placement of his seal-skin. He reaches out and pulls back. Bucky leans forward, accepting, and looks down at the stump of his arm as Steve runs his fingers tentatively over its improbably smooth skin.

“Someone stole it. Five years ago.”

Steve freezes; his whole world freezes, with those few simple words. _Five years ago_. Bucky’s eyes are soft and rueful - as though he is the one who’s sorry, when surely that role belongs to Steve. Oh, but he’s been -

“How?”

“For the longest time,” James says slowly. “I thought it was an accident. But when I made it back to my pod -” He shrugs a little. “It wasn’t.” Steve doesn’t say anything. Can’t. The words stick in his mouth, trite and meaningless. “You remember Pierce,” James says slowly. Steve nods. “He was talking with some humans, some scientists, who had a - particular interest in selkies. And once he heard I was meeting with a human, _endangering the pod_ -” His mouth twists bitterly. “I became disposable.”

“James,” Steve whispers. Steps closer, and this time James is the one to shy away, to keep distance between them. He can only take one half-step before his back hist stone, but Steve gets the message. He stops moving, though his heart cries out in protest, though his fingers ache to touch, to reassure. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He can’t stop himself from asking. He’s said - so many things, done so many things, under the wrong assumption - without ever stopping to ask -

“I didn’t want to,” James says, flat, and Steve must flinch, or let something of the hurt he doesn’t deserve to feel show on his face, or something, because James softens and presses himself further back, all at once.

“You don’t understand,” he whispers. “I’m not a real selkie. Not anymore.” His hand moves useless, as though to gesture at the seal-skin he’s still holding; it swings in his grip, limp and drying. “This isn’t _my_ skin.”

“But -”

“That’s what the humans wanted,” Bucky hisses. “To make skins for themselves. So they started by destroying mine and making a false one, and I took it and escaped, but -” He shakes his hand again. “Didn’t you even think about why my pod was so eager to get rid of me? Leaders don’t marry politically!”

Steve blinks, trying to absorb all of this. His brain feels like it’s been wiped clean, and all that comes out of his mouth is a bewildered, “They don’t?”

“No!” James snaps. “They manage the pod, they lead us all, why would we want them distracted by a false mate?’

“A false mate?” Steve repeats helplessly, utterly unable to think. _That’s me_ , he thinks - it doesn’t even take him a moment. _False mate_.

“I don’t think you’re listening to me,” James snaps, tense and angry for the first time, despite all of Steve’s attempts at provocation over the past few days. “I’m not - I may as well not be a selkie at all. This isn’t my _skin_.”

Steve watches him, watches him shake the seal-skin in his hand again, at once resentful of and clinging to it. “That’s why?” he murmurs. “This is why you didn’t tell me?”

“You’re not -”

“I _am_ listening, I’ve never listened this much in my life,” Steve interrupts, the words tumbling out of his mouth, haphazard and eager. “Why are you telling me now?” He has to know, even though the question earns him one of Bucky’s exasperated looks. Steve thinks - hopes - he sees some fondness there, too.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says. “Maybe I just got sick of your incessant glaring.” His mouth pulls up into half a smile, suddenly, and Steve has to look down, look away for fear that he’ll give into his impulses and reach out to touch it.

“I was so hurt,” he says - tries to say. His voice comes out in a whisper. “I thought you’d left. I wish you’d told me.”

“I didn’t _want_ to,” Bucky repeats, agitated, shifting on both feet.

“Because of this?” Steve gestures at the skin clutched in Bucky’s hand. “Bucky -”

“What if humans cut off your tail and gave you one they made?” Bucky demands. “It’s not the same. I’m not a selkie! I’m just -”

“You’re not just anything,” Steve snaps. “You never were, and you never will be.” He steps close, closer, and Bucky doesn’t flinch away this time. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry I was so -”

“No, don’t -” Bucky says. “You thought I _left_ you. Of course you did. I hated that you did. I thought you hated me, but I still thought - I wanted to be near you. I thought -” He stops before he grows incomprehensible. He takes a breath.

“I should’ve had more faith.”

“I didn’t give you any reason to.” This time Bucky is the one who reaches out, brushing fingers tentatively along Steve’s wrist. His grip loosens, the seal-skin slipping from it, and Steve snatches for it before it can drift onto the sand. No matter what Bucky says about his skin, it’s still an honour to hold one, to hold _this_ one, and Steve tries not to be too obvious about clutching it to his chest, to his heart. “I thought I could live with it, with your hating me. If I just could be _near_ you.” He smiles, and it’s a small, sad thing. “I had a week. It’ll be enough.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve breathes. He feels like he’s groping through dark waters, missing something vital. Bucky’s eyes flicker, and he looks down before Steve can read what they say.

“It’s alright,” he says. “You’ll do what you have to for your - your shoal.” He fights to keep his smile on; it wobbles, a little pathetic. Steve still doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“For my _shoal_?”

Bucky nods. “You can call this mating off. I won’t fight you. You can mate someone more - befitting of your status.”

Understanding dawns like harsh lightning, and Steve is snapping, “No!” before he can think at all. Bucky’s eyebrows raise.

“I said it was fine, Steve. I’d rather not stay married out of pity. I still have some pride.”

“No, that’s not what I - who said it would be out of pity?” Steve demands wildly, and realises even as he says it that the answer is him. Who else could have given that impression, in the week that he spent alone with his new mate? Bucky does not even deign him with an answer, just looks at him with even eyes. A wave crashes onto the rock behind him, sprays the two of them with sea foam. When Steve breathes in, the briny air has never scraped so along his throat. He doesn’t know what to say - there must be _something_ that will keep Bucky with him, beside him.

“I don’t understand,” Bucky says, his hands helpless by his side. He has that same look in his eyes as he’d had when he proposed that they run away: the look that said he was not daring to let himself entertain hope, which meant that great wellsprings of it were erupting in his heart. “You ought to be glad to see the back of me.”

“I wasn’t then,” Steve murmurs. “I won’t be now.”

“You said it yourself,” Bucky snaps, agitated now, and still not hiding the hope behind his eyes well. “You _loved_ me. What -” Another shock of sudden realisation makes Steve’s heart leap: it hadn’t been the verb Bucky shied away from, what felt like forever ago, but the past tense of it. Warmth floods Steve’s body.

“I was _lying_ ,” he says, tender, and that has Bucky falling silent. The sea groans behind him, vocalising as he cannot or will not. Steve dares to take another step towards Bucky; he is so close that he can feel the warmth off Bucky’s body, can count his lowered eyelashes. “If you want to leave, I won’t stop you. You must know that. But -”

Bucky takes a shaky breath. “But?”

“But I wish you would stay,” Steve whispers. Bucky still doesn’t look up, doesn’t meet his eyes. “Bucky -”

Bucky kisses him, wordless and wonderful. Steve can feel himself melting even as he pushes forward: this kiss is full of the tenderness their previous one had lacked, even as Bucky pulls him in with enough force that their teeth clack together and they have to pause, pull away, realign. Steve can feel the hints of a smile curving up Bucky’s lips.

It is only when they pull apart that Steve realises how closely they have pressed together - though it’s been years they are twined together like strands of kelp, wrapped around each other in a way that is a little awkward and a lot right. It’s been years, and they still fit together. Steve breathes in, and the sea-salt air has never tasted so sweet. Bucky looks up at him with those beautiful electric eyes, and Steve is utterly lost.

He thinks he understands the custom to sequester a newly mated couple off, now. They have to venture into the outside world tomorrow, and all he wants is to stay in their burrow some days more and wrap himself around his mate.

They have tonight. Bucky had intended for a week together to be enough contact for the rest of his life; they can make a night last a week. Steve wraps his arm around Bucky’s waist, sucks a mark into the pale skin of his neck.

“You’ll stay?” he asks. Bucky nods, wordless and smiling so hard that wrinkles form around his eyes. Steve smiles back, helpless. Takes his lover’s hand and rejoices in the gentle grip, the way their fingers twine together. “Come on, then. Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on the tweeter [@layersofsilence](https://twitter.com/layersofsilence), or find the rest of my social medias in my [dreamwidth masterpost](https://layersofsilence.dreamwidth.org/279.html)


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